“There are some people who don’t wait.” Robert Krulwich on the future of journalism

Excerpts:

I suppose this is his main point:

Some people when they look for a job in journalism ask themselves, What do I like to do and Who can take me there? Who can get me to a war zone? To a ballpark? To Wall Street? To politicians, to movie stars? Who’s got the vehicle? And you send them your resume and you say, “I want a seat in your car.” … And you wait.

But there are some people, who don’t wait.

I don’t know exactly what going on inside them; but they have this… hunger. It’s almost like an ache.
Something inside you says I can’t wait to be asked I just have to jump in and do it.

The perfect description of the fire that burns within (and when I discovered this inside of me, I realized journalism was the right path):

What you love can differ, but the love, once it comes, that feeling of waking up with a kind of eagerness, a crazy momentum that pushes you into your day, an excitement you realize you don’t ever want to go way… that’s important.

If you don’t have that feeling, maybe you’re lucky. You can lead a more sane life. But if you do – I say congratulations. You have what it takes to begin.

…

But what I’ve noticed is that people who fall in love with journalism, who stay at it, who stay stubborn, very often win. I don’t know why, but I’ve seen it happen over and over.

So, here, for what it’s worth, ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2011, is my graduation advice. Some of you will say, “This is a fantasy. Pay this man no attention,” but hey, you invited me, so here’s what I’ve got:

If you can… fall in love, with the work, with people you work with, with your dreams and their dreams. Whatever it was that got you to this school, don’t let it go. Whatever kept you here, don’t let that go. Believe in your friends. Believe that what you and your friends have to say… that the way you’re saying it – is something new in the world.

And don’t stop. Just hold on… and keep loving what you love… and you’ll see. In the end, they’ll let you stay.

That’s just beautiful.

I guess the graduation countdown began freshman year of college. I’d arrived at the University of Michigan in August 2007 desperate for freedom and choices. High school graduation was one of the happiest days of my life to that point. I was so ready for college, ready to be free of cliquey classmates and insane amounts of homework for AP classes. During that first confusing, overwhelming month of college, I remember looking at a future academic calendar. April 30, 2011. It seemed impossibly far away.

As I meandered through the next two years of college, June 17, 2010 (my 21st birthday) seemed like a much more important date to keep in mind. I made friends, discovered that I really loved this thing called sports writing and managed to get pretty good grades in somewhat interesting classes. It wasn’t until the end of junior year as I watched my older/best friends from the student paper get ready to graduate that I realized, ‘Oh, crap. I’m next.’ I watched their graduation on the Big Ten Network (psh, Obama), and could barely imagine myself sitting in the Big House in a cap and gown 365 days later.

You think you have so much time. And then suddenly, you don’t.

Fall semester flew by. I wasn’t one of those people who commemorated each milestone, like, ‘Oh my gosh! Our last first football game!’ or ‘Oh my gosh! Our last second football game!’ I thought maybe I’d get nostalgic after the last home football game. My fellow football writers and I stayed late, taking pictures on the Block M on the 50-yard line. Then the endzones. We ran around and pretended to catch game-winning touchdowns in dress clothes. I wasn’t sad. I knew we’d have the Ohio State game in Columbus. And then after that game, I wasn’t sad. I knew we’d have a bowl game to cover.

I wasn’t sad when that ended, either — more than anything, I was shocked that football season was over so quickly. Then, the Daily ended. The one thing I’d been associated with for 3.5 years, gone. I was just Nicole now, not Nicole the sports writer from the Daily. I slept a lot. I spent nights with friends at bars. I watched the entire series of The Wire (totally recommend it, by the way). I managed a 4.0 GPA — and I’m still not sure how that one worked out.

Before I knew it, my parents were in Ann Arbor. We were attending graduation receptions and dinners. I was giving my grandparents a tour of the campus I’d called home for four years. This was where I changed from that 17-year-old prep school kid into a strong woman who knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life, I thought as we walked by the student publications building. My friends and I decorated our caps with Block Ms and glitter. Our parents appreciated that during the processional — they spotted us easily. (I still think that they found us because we were some of the last people into the stadium, but our caps were adorable nonetheless.)

I sat through two two-hour graduation ceremonies on April 30, 2011. The first, in the Big House, was beautiful but a bit impersonal. The second, for my small Public Policy major, featured a fascinating keynote speech by the Washington Post’s Robin Wright, who happened to be the first Daily female football writer. Obviously, I loved it. My friend Tom gave the student commencement speech, and I cried for the first time.

We all cried later that night while we held each other during The Gambler. The bar closed, and nobody wanted to leave. After we got shoved out, we all hung out on the sidewalk. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to go to sleep because that would be the end of graduation. The end of college. Seems like everyone had the same feeling. The sidewalk didn’t start to clear for a good half hour. I cried myself to sleep that night.

I’m still not sure how I feel about graduating college. I know I’m ready to be done with classes and exams. I’m definitely also ready to live somewhere nicer than a house built in the 1950s with poor plumbing and ridiculously high rent. I wasn’t really ready to leave my friends or the city of Ann Arbor, though. I’ve grown apart from most of my high school friends; we’d been friends largely because of convenience. My college friends and I share passions. We’ve done the library-until-4am thing and we’ve also had the ridiculously-fun-cannot-believe-we-did-that stories. Every time I think about not living five minutes away from my best friends from Michigan, I get into a weird, sad funk. Same thing happens when I think about how much I miss the town itself. I miss Benny’s. I miss my gym. I already miss walking down Hoover Street on a Football Saturday.

Graduation isn’t an entirely happy occasion, but it’s not meant to be sad, either. I loved my four years I spent in Ann Arbor, and I feel so incredibly lucky to have made good enough friends that it pains me to be apart from them. I’m proud of my degree from the University of Michigan. Most of all, I’m excited about the future. I’m not sure what it will bring for me past August — hopefully a job that I’m passionate about. Everything will be a challenge (from snagging a good job to keeping in touch with those I care about) but I’m ready for the hard stuff. If I’ve learned anything over the past four years, it’s that surviving the hard stuff makes me a much stronger, smarter person.

On that note, I’ll end this blog post with what ended my graduation night. Take it away, Kenny:

That is a flashback to the summer of 2008, when I was interning at The Trentonian, a newspaper in Trenton, N.J. I was covering the Trenton Thunder, the Yankees’ Double-A team. I was 18 and female. I was also an intern, which is the excuse that the organization used for denying me locker room access. I think my bosses had to talk to the PR staff to explain to them that I was to be treated as any full-time reporter would be. But that was after a week or two of the humiliating wait-outside-the-locker-room-door routine. I still made deadline each night, but it was a struggle. And I didn’t get the best quotes. Eventually, I was given the access I deserved — and my stories showed the improvement.

I bring this up because of the uproar (and lack of uproar) surrounding the news that Bergen County Record sports columnist Tara Sullivan was denied access to the locker room at the Masters on Sunday. I saw some outrage on Twitter by other female sports journalists. I saw a lot of people buying the excuse that the Masters gave her — that it was a “misunderstanding.” Mark my words, it’s never a misunderstanding if it doesn’t happen to male reporters as well.

I’d like to think female sports journalists have come far enough in the field that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. At least some people feel the same way; to Tara’s male colleagues who shared quotes with her, thank you. That’s wonderful and appreciated, and I hope if I’m ever in a similar situation, male writers treat me with the same kindness. But keeping in mind that it is illegal to prevent a female sports writer to enter the locker room if male sports writers are allowed in, this shouldn’t even be an issue. But things still happen.

I’ve had male sports agents deny me interviews in large part because I’m female and young. (Official reason? I think something along the lines of the athlete being too busy for the interview.) That’s something I’ve dealt with and grown from.

But locker room access is a right. And it’s downright humiliating to get shut out of there.

Let’s just say it’s easier said than done to pick something you believe in strongly and write why. Here’s my attempt to explain why I love Twitter so much.

I believe in Twitter. Yes, Twitter, the microblogging, 140-characters-per-post form of social networking that’s been around for fewer than five years. I believe in the power of social media. I believe in connecting with people I’d never normally come into contact with. I believe in the evolution of communication. I believe that though the prototypical newspaper may be dying, the media industry as a whole will never follow suit. I believe Twitter represents the transformation of journalism. It was created to feature 140-character posts so users could send them as text messages.

In that sense, Twitter is mobile and brief. But it also allows users to link to long, feature-length articles and breathtaking photos. In that way, Twitter extends beyond 140 characters to the infinite depths of the internet. By the way, everything I have written so far could fit neatly in six tweets — six punchy, direct tweets that could be retweeted by my followers. Welcome to tweets, retweets, hashtags and @-replies — the language of Twitter, a discipline I would have preferred to study at the University of Michigan instead of Latin.

I created a personal Twitter account (@nicoleauerbach) in the spring of 2009, which seems to be about the time a lot of sports journalists jumped into the Twitterverse. At that time, I was still figuring out if I wanted to try to be a sports writer after college. “Try” was the key word, since everyone around me kept reminding me of the newspaper industry’s impending death. Instead of asking myself rather depressing questions about the dire straits of journalism on a daily basis, I said, ‘Screw it.’ I’d give journalism a shot as long as I could. Sports writing was a career path that could provide me with a job that didn’t feel like a job. Anything else would be work, and struggling to make it through each day wasn’t something I wanted.

After deciding to sink or swim with journalism, my next step was simple. I turned to Twitter. I began following sports writers I came into contact with during my various internships as well as sports writers I admired from afar. Most journalists link to their own work on a daily or weekly basis, so each day, links to the best-written stories of the day flood my Twitter feed. I have come in contact with the best current sports writing on a regular basis because I follow the best sports writers.

The beauty of the act of “following” is that it’s not mutual. These writers I followed didn’t have to know who I was before accepting me, like a Facebook friend request. It’s a one-way street, and I think that’s why celebrities enjoy Twitter so much. They can control how much personal information they let out to the public, and their fans can follow along; the stars aren’t forced to read fans’ personal information. The ultimate sign of respect, therefore, is to be followed back by someone you respect.

Whether or not someone follows you back, Twitter provides the opportunity for conversation — even if it’s one-sided. Assuming people keep their profile public, you can see anyone’s tweets. You can respond to any of them with an @-reply, and the user will receive your response. That’s true from the biggest celebrities, like Shaq, to the smallest Twitter audiences, like my best friend at Penn State. So though some people view Twitter as a popularity contest, I view it as an open communication system with quick burst of information or exchanges.

Twitter is especially powerful in times of breaking news. Of course, there is often a rush to be the first to report something — even if it isn’t entirely true, which is an inherent risk with journalism in general. But when I think of Twitter’s reach, I immediately think of June 25, 2009. That was the day Michael Jackson died. I was at a Cape Cod baseball league game, and I saw the news on CNN’s breaking news Twitter account. Suddenly, hundreds of people began retweeting the news and discussing their shock. My twitterfeed turned into a million different stories; some people recounted their favorite story about Jackson, others linked to their favorite songs and still others tweeted about the dangers of anesthesia.

I’d never experienced a news event in such an interesting way with so many diverse perspectives. The uniqueness of the response encouraged more people to make Twitter accounts and be a part of the next big event. Responding to a news event on Twitter — whether you have 30 followers or 300,000 — makes you feel like you are a part of it.

I believe that’s what attracts people to Twitter, and it’s why I believe this isn’t just a fad that will pass. In an increasingly technological world, we yearn to feel connected. Twitter allows us to follow those we care about, be followed by those who care about us and connect us to events and news that is larger than any one of us. Twitter can be as simple as a fleeting thought — “What did people do when they stopped at red lights before texting?” It can also be a link to a tragic, well-written story, like ESPN’s Outside the Lines feature on the family of an Oklahoma State basketball player killed a decade ago in a plane crash. Twitter is the former, the latter and everything in between. And I believe in it.

**image via technorati.com**

It was welcome week my freshman year, and I was making small talk with the girl across the hallway. She asked me what my dream job would be — a little dense for small talk, I guess. Like a reflex, I responded I’d love to write for Sports Illustrated. I guess I forgot that I had plans of majoring in economics.

In the infinite wisdom only a sophomore has, she told me I should write for this thing called The Michigan Daily. Her friend was a news reporter, and she’d pass along contact info for the sports section.

I think I could have been an econ major if I really wanted to, and I might have learned to like it. But nothing will ever compare to the passion I have for sports writing, something that began and flourished at the Daily. So, I owe you a special thank you, Alessandra.

I’m not sure how many articles I’ve written over the past four years — but I know it’s hundreds. I don’t know how many road trips I’ve been on — but I know I would have never gone to places like Fairbanks, Alaska, or West Lafayette, Ind., otherwise. I don’t know how many athletes I’ve interviewed or coaches I’ve shook hands with.

None of the specifics of that stuff really matters. It comes down to this: The Daily has been the most challenging but most rewarding thing I’ve ever been a part of.

I’ve also met some incredible sportswriters along the way, and I can’t say goodbye to the Daily without mentioning them.

To those who have come before me in the Daily sports section, particularly Scott, Brom, Mark, Courtney, Andy, Alex, Ian and Podges: Thank you for making me stick around. It’s always about the people, and if I didn’t have you guys I don’t think I would have kept coming back for sports meetings to begin with. We’ve had a lot of fun outside of the Daily building, too, and I’m just really happy to have had you in my life.

To the current Daily guys, particularly Joe, Ryan, Tim, Burns, Zak, Florek, Nesbitt and Casandra: Thanks for keeping me sane and for teaching me how to steal memorabilia from other schools’ arenas. And weirdly enough, I already miss late nights at the Daily — and coffee breaks — with all of you. (I miss winning staff picks already, too.) Keep writing, and keep in touch.

To the professional journalists I’ve worked with, particularly Mark Snyder, Angelique Chengelis and Mike Rosenberg (Mike, giving you a Twitter shoutout was too tempting…): I don’t think you’ll ever understand the impact you’ve had on my life (but bear with me as I try to explain). I learned how to be a journalist from watching great journalists, and you three are great journalists. I watched you observe, ask questions, take notes and break news. My attempts at copying your strategies and came up short every time, but give me 20 years. Maybe I’ll get as good as you guys one day — and then you guys will let me pay for Benny’s.

To the Daily: I hated you. I loved you. Now, I thank you.